


America's Most Wanted

by Alyndra



Series: Drifter Interlude [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s08e08 Hunteri Heroici, F/M, Law Enforcement, POV Outsider, The Winchesters and The Law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 21:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17712269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyndra/pseuds/Alyndra
Summary: The FBI notice one Sam Winchester seems to have bought a house in Texas with widowed veterinarian Amelia Richardson. They investigate, but after some hinky adventures in surveillance and very confusing cat-and-mouse games, the Winchesters’ case makes less sense than ever.Warnings: Sam and Amelia get kinky but only offscreen, various people brandish guns and swear a lot





	America's Most Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my fic Drifters, which is about Sam and Amelia getting together and is much darker than this; I've therefore tried to write it so it can stand alone in case anyone doesn't want to read about how messed up they were back then. 
> 
> Like the first fic, my goal in writing is to skirt around the edges of what happened in canon. Those conversations all still happened, but copy-pasting them would be boring. This fic may not be what canon intended, but hopefully all these ridiculous events should be possible without actively contradicting it.
> 
> I'm so glad I finally managed to finish this fic, which has been in the back of my mind for about five years now. There's one more sequel I have ideas for, so subscribe to the series if you want to be notified if/when it gets written!
> 
> Huge thanks to the very patient mods of the Sam Winchester Big Bang, and please take a minute to go tell [**oh-cassie**](https://oh-cassie.tumblr.com/) how wonderful her [gorgeous art for this story](https://oh-cassie.tumblr.com/post/182651890780/art-masterpost-for-the-sam-winchester-big-bang) is!

* * *

"Hey, Pat," Julius leaned back to speak around the cubicle partition. "What do you remember about Sam Winchester?"

Pat squinted off into space a moment before looking back at his partner. "One of those two psycho brothers, right? Mass shooting spree across the country 'bout a year ago, shot trying to escape a local PD? Why?"

"Any reason to think he'd be buying a house in Kermit, Texas?"

"Are you kidding me? Must be some other poor sap with the same name," Pat dismissed.

"Same birthday, too?"

"Identity theft, then. Who the fuck picks a famous serial killer to impersonate—" Pat stopped mid-thought and sighed. "Shit, alright, lemme look at what you've got."

"Thought so," Julius said, not sounding thrilled. "Only it ain't much, cause his damn records are sealed."

Pat frowned. "They shouldn't be. Somebody misfile something?"

"I sent a request half an hour ago, just got an email back. Access denied."

* * *

"Ok, here's what we know," Pat said, two days later, to their boss. "The Winchesters have records we still haven't been able to get into, but the description of the guy, from phone conversations we've had with the real estate agent, match Sam Winchester's description at least on a superficial level. He now co-owns a house with one Amelia Richardson. She’s a veterinary professional, widow of Sgt. Don Richardson; otherwise boring, normal life, from what we can tell so far. The last sure knowledge we have of Winchester activity was the shooting spree we all remember, terminating in the reported deaths of both brothers.”

Julius snorted softly and scornfully. “Reported.”

Well, the circumstances were decidedly suspicious. Pat continued. “Unfortunately, everyone who was in the police station at the time of the arrest was killed. The agents in charge went missing almost immediately afterwards, and all reports have been subsequently classified. Subsequent rumors of activity suggest that once again, the Winchester brothers may have faked their own deaths. We have no idea where the older brother, Dean, is; sightings of the brothers together dried up several months ago, but Sam appears to have spent those months living in Kermit, Texas, with Amelia Richardson, and a dog."

"If it's really him, and not some psycho fanboy who's impersonating him," his boss said, following their train of thought. "Any suspicious deaths in the area?"

"None. It's possible he's gone dormant; but such periods rarely last indefinitely, when we're dealing with this level of criminal."

"Right," Julius joined in. "So we need to positively identify him, track his activity to see if it can lead us to the brother, and then arrest him before he gets spooked out of the nice little domestic groove he's in."

"We need to go to Texas. With a full surveillance set-up and a van."

Their boss nods. "All right. I want daily check-ins and reports, and I'll have someone here keep trying to get the records access, but I agree this can't wait. Go."

* * *

"Well, it's definitely Sam fucking Winchester, not an imposter," Pat said three days later, peering through binoculars from the safety of a surveillance van. "That's six foot five of psychopathic killer, walking through his own fucking front door to a woman, a dog and a fucking white picket fence backyard."

"There's just no justice in life sometimes, is there?" Julius remarked, more mild than his partner, but still scowling at the front door which was closing behind Winchester.

"Too often," Pat agreed. "That's where our job comes in."

"Bugs all set to go?" Julian asked, not for the first time.

"Soon as they're both out of the house for enough time," Pat said, rolling his eyes at Julian for triple-checking him. It was just nerves on the younger agent’s part.

"Think I saw him glancing over this way," Julian said.

"He glanced everywhere, you're being paranoid."

"Yeah, well, no one who's ever gone after these guys has been paranoid enough, have they?"

Pat grunted. There wasn't much he could say to that.

* * *

They got their chance that evening, when Sam, Amelia and the dog all went for a leisurely stroll down the street. Pat and Julian watched them disappear around the corner four blocks down, and then Pat jimmied the lock open and slipped inside while Julian watched outside for their return.

 _Clean,_ was Pat's first thought inside the house. Weren't some serial killers obsessive neat freaks? The place had the sparse look of a house that's been recently moved into and then some. It wasn’t just that there wasn’t yet enough furniture and bric-a-brac. Pat could pick out family pictures of Amelia Richardson, and a dog bed in the living room, yet he couldn't identify any personal touches from Winchester. The whole place felt bland and almost excessively normal.

He had no real idea what he was expecting out of Sam Winchester, anyway. Guns and machetes all over the walls? Not all that likely. The younger Winchester liked to blend in, from what little they knew of him.

Based on the blandness of the motel-style furniture around him, if Winchester blended any harder, he'd be paste. No matter. Pat had a job to do and he'd better be done before the pseudo-happy couple got back from their walk. Pat slipped a package of bugs out of his pocket and started distributing them around the living room, kitchen, dining room. He was on his way to the bedroom when his earbud crackled: Julius had spotted them returning. Pat stuck a final bug against the light fixture in the hallway and beat a hasty retreat, out the back door before they were in the front. Thirty seconds later he was back safe in the van.

"Coverage isn't complete, but it's probably enough to catch most of their conversations, and to know if anything major goes on," Pat reported, more to hear the sound of his own voice than for Julius' sake, since Julius was already futzing with the feeds on three screens.

"Shh," Julius said absently, "They're saying something — something about a bitch — a bitch that was so unmanageable, she had to tranq her twice before she could do the leg amputation — holy shit, Pat, are you hearing this?”

“You forgot the background info already,” Pat said wearily. “She’s a vet. Bitches are female dogs.”

“Oh,” Julius muttered, deflated. “I knew that. I guess it would be crazy if the case broke in the first five minutes,” he added.

Pat settled into his chair and kicked his heels up. “Crazy,” he mused. “I’d love to snap this guy up, get him properly locked away and then worry about asking him questions. But there’s three risks we have to worry about before we can take him safely. One, the woman. He could use her as a hostage on a moment’s notice, and if he doesn’t, then we have to worry about if she’s under his sway far enough to actively assist him in a showdown. Two, the brother. Is he close? If he is, we’ve got a lot more to worry about, and our chances of bringing either of them in clean go down to a whisker. Three, he doesn’t show ‘em off, but I found three guns plus some nasty-ass knives, and you can bet your mama’s britches that ain’t half of what he’s got squirreled away. Even a SWAT team is going to take casualties if we have to dig him out. This being Texas, the neighbors probably think he’s perfectly normal, but I guarantee you this guy’s going to be deadly coming out of a sound sleep.”

Julius looked a little wide-eyed. “You think it’s that bad?”

“That’s what surveillance is for, grasshopper,” Pat sighed. “We need to nail down what he’ll do when, what she’s in for, and whether the brother’s in the area.”

“So we wait,” Julius frowned, but shrugged.

“We wait,” Pat agreed. “Anybody who told you fieldwork was a thrill a minute was lying their lily-white ass off.”

* * *

Pat jerked out of a doze later that evening to Julius frantically poking him. He was wide-eyed and holding out a headset; Pat put it on, and his ears were immediately assaulted by screaming. He bolted upright. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, everything seemed quiet and then they went into the bedroom twenty minutes ago and— _this_ started up. Is he murdering her?”

“Unlikely, after this amount of time,” Pat said, trying to pick anything out of the sound feed. “But he could have been set off by anything.” He started checking his weapon.

“Do we go in?” Julius was looking worried.

“He could beat her every night for all we know,” Pat said. “Or she could be dying right now. But we don’t have the manpower...”

“Summon the locals for backup?”

“Do we have time?” Pat scrubbed his hand over his face. “Response time way out here is at least half an hour. Make the call, just in case. But much as I hate to say it, it’s just us for now. And if we go in, even with the element of surprise and assuming the thing that set him off wasn’t that he _noticed_ us out here, it’s still more likely than not to end with one of us _dead._ ”

“And if he did notice something, and he’s expecting us?” Julius asked, even as he fumbled to call police dispatch.

“Then we’re both as good as dead,” Pat said. He hated calls like this. “I’m senior, and I won’t order you in there. I can’t. But I’m not going to sit out here and let that woman die on our watch, either.”

Julius took a deep breath. He was still young, only a few years under his belt, a steady girlfriend back home but no kids. “You’re not going in there alone,” he said. “I’m with you.”

Pat was old and his heart was crusty, but he still felt proud of the kid.

Julius reached somebody on his line, and gave them his information, the address, and a concise description of the situation.

The screaming had continued, rising and falling a bit, while they talked. They could make out thuds and thumps, too.

“Hang on,” Pat was listening hard to his own headset. Julius switched over to listen on his. “I think it’s getting... rhythmic.”

“Are they... having sex?” Julius whispered. Pat felt a whole slew of conflicting emotions. That screaming didn’t sound like any sex he’d ever heard, or had. Was Sam Winchester known for raping his murder victims? For the thousandth time, he cursed those sealed files he couldn’t see.

But now the screaming was definitely tapering off into moans, unmistakably sexual moans. He collapsed back down into his chair with a _whumph_. “Seems like everybody’s going to live tonight.”

Julius rapidly switched back to the police dispatcher, saying, “Whoops, cancel that, sorry, our bad. Just some overenthusiastic ... no, ma’am, we were not trying to string you along. Thank you. No, we’ll be fine. Bye.”

Julius’ hand shook a bit as he took the headphones off. “What the actual fuck.”

Pat kept his on, if only because one of them had to keep themselves apprised of the situation. But he was wishing he could scrub some of these noises out of his brain.

“Abusive motherfucker,” he said. “One day soon, he’s going to pay for everything. We’ll get him.”

“We’ll make it happen,” Julius said fervently.

* * *

Since the woman, Richardson, worked nights, neither she nor Winchester actually slept, despite the evening hour. Soon she was getting ready to leave, making all the normal noises and comments of someone getting ready for a day at work. Someone with a filthy mouth, anyway. She liked to swear even more than Pat did. After she was gone, Winchester made himself a sandwich and started cleaning the living room, where it didn’t take him long to discover the first bug. By one a.m. he’d swept the house thoroughly enough to discover almost all the others. Pat and Julius scowled as he poured his little collection from palm to palm, dizzying video feeds spinning wildly across their screens.

“Bastard,” Julius grumbled. He’d never had a suspect find a bug before, and was taking the insolence personally.

“He still hasn’t found the one in the hallway,” Pat said, trying to look on the bright side. “Spent too long searching the bedroom.” Never mind that Pat _would_ have bugged the bedroom, if he’d had time.

“He’s found all but two,” Julius grumbled. “And now he’s just thinking. What’s he thinking about, huh? What’s he planning to do next?”

“I just hope it’s not killing us in our sleep,” Pat said. “Winchester’s always been unpredictable.”

Abruptly the spinning screens all went dark at once.

“Did he deactivate them?” Pat asked.

“No, we’re still getting feed,” Julius said, tapping away at the keys. “He just turned out the lights or… there.” He’d backed up the tapes to right before they went black, and several screens clearly showed a heavy yellow envelope. “…Or blocked the cameras with something,” he finished. “We’re still getting audio.”

For all the good that did them. For a very large and supposedly fearless man, Sam Winchester made remarkably little noise.

“He’s like a tiger or something,” Pat said, fascinated despite himself. “You don’t hear him coming.”

They didn’t hear much from him for the next several hours, but when the sun came up, he was outside where they could put their eyes on him again, walking the dog like any boring suburbanite. Pat and Jesse exchanged glances, but they weren’t tempted to try and replace the bugs inside. No doubt Winchester was perfectly capable and willing of laying booby traps, and they’d be lucky if they were the nonlethal kind. Pat didn’t have any desire to find out the hard way.

Soon after he got back from walking the dog, he came outside again. Unexpectedly, he had changed into a dark gray suit. They watched as he got into his classic black beast of a car and drove off. Pat waited for him to turn the street corner before he brought their van to life and followed.

* * *

Winchester parked at the local police station. Pat had stayed the government-recommended three cars behind him the whole way. Sam came to complete stops instead of rolling ones and never failed to use a turn signal, but if he knew he was being followed, he showed no sign of trying to lose them.

At the station, Sam got out of his car and strode confidently up to the front doors. Pat and Julius exchanged glances. Surely he wasn’t just going to turn himself in?

“I’m still getting audio from the bugs,” Julius said, tapping at his equipment. “They’re interfering with each other some, but I think I can clear it up.” He tapped a few more keys and put it on speaker. The sound of Sam’s shoes on hard floor came in pretty clear.

“Detective Hudak,” Sam’s voice sounded—warm? “It’s been a long time, but it’s good to see you again.”

“Sam Winchester,” a woman’s voice said. She sounded surprised, but not alarmed. “I hear you’ve had a busy eight years.”

“Oh, I could fill books,” Sam said. “Truth is stranger than fiction. But in case you were wondering, the mass murder crap was definitely fiction.”

“I figured,” the woman, Hudak, responded. “I made the mistake of taking you and your brother at face value once, but never let it be said I repeat my mistakes.”

“You were always sharp,” Sam chuckled. “Dean snowed a lot of people without getting called out like you did to him.”

“He was a scoundrel,” she laughed. “But he cared about you a lot.”

“Yeah.” Sam sounded heavy.

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry,” and now her voice was full of contrition.

“Can you believe this?” Julius was hissing, outraged. “He’s got someone on the inside. How could any self-respecting police officer actually _sympathize_ with…”

“Maybe that’s why he picked this place to settle,” Pat said heavily. “He felt safe. Whether he’s snookered her or she just doesn’t care how evil he is, he’s got a friend in a position of power.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t end up having to call them in last night,” Julius said darkly. “Who knows what could have happened.”

“So what brings you in today, Sam?’ Hudak’s voice continued in their feeds.

“Nothing urgent,” Sam said. “But I found some government property lying around, and I figured I should save the taxpayers some dough by returning it.”

There was some crackling interference as Sam must have moved the envelope full of bugs. The sound peaked and then vanished. “He’s set it down on something,” Julius muttered.

Pat just nodded. So Sam wanted to let them know—what? That he was in with the locals? That he wasn’t afraid of the law? That he cared about returning government property?

“Thanks?” Hudak sounded puzzled, too, but she wasn’t rustling the bag. “So, how long have you been in town for?”

“Oh, let’s see, about… five months now?” Sam said. “How about you, did you move straight down here from Minnesota?”

“More or less,” she said. “I couldn’t stay there, after what happened, you know? Plus, I never did care for being buried in snow half the year.”

“Oh, I feel you,” Sam said. “Sliding all over the road, weighed down with twice as much gear just to stay warm…”

“Yeah, and shoveling. I have better things to do at six am than be out freezing my ass off in the driveway.”

“I lived in California,” Sam laughed. “But I think I like Texas even better. Not so crowded.”

“Do you think you’ll stick around, then? That’ll be a change, won’t it?”

“I always wanted to settle down,” Sam said. “My life just didn’t allow for it. Now… I’d like to, you know? But who knows what’s in the future, considering it’s my life.” That last bit almost sounded wry.

“I hear you,” she said, chuckling. “Never a dull moment.”

“That was actually another reason I wanted to drop by,” Sam said, and again Pat and Julius exchanged glances. “When I was living in the motel on the edge of town, I happened to notice some crap. Most of it was run-of-the-mill, but there was one guy living there who’s got a boatload of warrants out for him. I’m sure he’s still there.”

“This guy got a name?” Hudak asked.

“What he wrote down for the desk was Ferris Bueller,” Sam said, voice level. “But I’d bet money the state’ll recognize the name Guy Mephisto.”

There was the sound of keys tapping for a minute, and then a grunt. “This him?”

“Him or his evil twin,” Sam agreed. “I can provide a character reference: he’s bad news, through and through.”

“Really. Sounds like a story there.”

“Nothing too interesting, no. Mostly a gut feeling, and having to watch him stalking any woman who looked like she was alone,” Sam’s voice got dark. “I know what a predator looks like. So I looked him up. And sure enough, his record’s long enough for a phone book.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll make sure we get right on that,” she suddenly sounded grim and all business.

“Room 143,” Sam said.

“Got it. Was that all?”

“Yeah, that covers it. I’ll see you around town, maybe,” Sam said easily, and then those too-quiet footsteps started and receded.

A minute later, Sam came out the wide front doors and went straight to his car.

“What the holy shit was that?” Julius said finally, as they watched him drive away and Pat sat there with his hands on the wheel, not moving until the black car had almost disappeared and he had to jerk the van into motion and cut off a soccer mom in a SUV in order to not lose him.

Sam drove to a local bar. Being still early in the morning, it was closed and dark, but by the time the FBI van pulled up and parked where they could keep an eye on Winchester’s black car, Sam had somehow managed to change out of the suit and into a workman’s ensemble. A toolbox in his hand as he exited the car completed the look. He went straight for the back door of the place, and within fifteen seconds had let himself in.

“The Winchesters are rumored to pick locks,” Julius said.

“That was quick even for an expert lock-picker,” Pat responded dubiously. “Maybe he got his hands on a key somehow.”

“Maybe,” Julius said. “Should we call in a SWAT team now, if he’s breaking and entering?”

”If we didn’t call them in last night, no reason to now,” Pat said. “As far as we know, it’s just property in there, not people. And besides, after that little display of his at the station, I’d rather leave them out of it until we have the lay of the land. A better lay than we do now, anyway.”

“Fair,” Julius said grudgingly. He was young and ansty; waiting and watching was never easy at that age.

After no more than half an hour, Sam emerged again. He wasn’t visibly carrying anything more than he had been when he went in, but this tended to make Pat more suspicious rather than less. “He could fit a lot of cash in that toolbox,” he said. “And if this wasn’t just raiding the cashbox, that’s almost worse. He could be checking out the place for something major to go down at, or setting traps at the exits if he’s planning another killing spree.”

“We’ll check it out before they open,” Julius said. “Or do you want to wait and see if they report a break-in?”

“Hmph,” Pat said, refusing to commit just yet. “Let’s see where he goes from here.”

But again, Sam didn’t try to lose them. He drove sedately to a vet clinic, where he met up with Amelia at the end of her shift, and they drove together to the local grocery store.

“He’s taunting us,” Julius said miserably. “We know the Winchesters have no problem opening fire in a crowded public venue, but we can’t put a SWAT team on him in a goddamn grocery store for anything short of imminent emergency.”

“He’s picking out kale. And celery,” Pat reported. They’d gotten out of the van this time, unwilling to be so far away with no idea what was going on inside, and now they were skulking in the peanut butter aisle as they spied on Sam taking his time in the produce section.

“Amelia’s moved on to the meats. She’s looking at rump roasts,” Julius said. A passing guy in shorts and flip-flops with a couple toddlers in his cart eyed them like he thought they were acting suspiciously; Pat supposed that other than them, not many people wore three-piece suits to the grocery store. He quickly grabbed a jar of peanut butter and pretended to examine the label.

Julius was pretending to tie his shoe. Once the guy shook his head and moved on, he stood up and hissed, “This is embarrassing.”

Pat sighed, putting the peanut butter back on the shelf. “Do you want to wait in the van?”

“No,” Julius sulked. “He’s still armed.”

“I know,” Pat said. “So are at least three other fine citizens of Kermit in here that I’ve seen, and probably a third of the women have handguns hidden in their purses.” He was East Coast born and raised, himself, and it didn’t make much sense to him, but it didn’t have to, he guessed.

Julius shook his head. “It could turn into a bloodbath, and our best hope is that Winchester decides not to be a psychopath today. I don’t like relying on that, Pat.”

“He didn’t yesterday, or the day before,” Pat sighed. “He’s got it pretty sweet here, and he’s got to know there’s nothing to be gained from acting out now. All we can do is hope the pattern holds.”

They watched as Sam and Amelia joked and nuzzled up to each other, to every outward appearance a happy couple planning dinner for the night, discussing the merits of sweet potatoes over spuds.

“He doesn’t let her out of his sight,” Julius said after a while. “Classic controlling behavior.”

“Or just newly in love, or we made him paranoid with the bugs,” Pat pointed out. “She makes decisions about what goes in the cart without checking with him.”

Another shopper entered their aisle, perusing the different jam types with no evidence of hurry. Pat sighed and jerked his head; their subjects of investigation were moving out of produce anyway.

It wasn’t easy, stalking somebody through a grocery store, especially when they weren’t at all dressed to blend in. Pat had an awful itch in the back of his brain that Sam knew they were watching him, and was tolerantly putting up with it the way you pretended to ignore a stray cat that was too skittish to come close right away. He didn’t make sudden moves, he didn’t ever raise his voice or sound agitated. He seemed focused on the mundane tasks of picking out food, and of paying attention to the woman with him.

She, meanwhile, didn’t show the same restraint. “These monkeyshitlovers, they’re still out of the good coffee,” they could hear from two aisles over, and “This shelf was organized by morons who copulate with their mothers, Sam, I swear…”

To these declarations Sam remained unruffled, even amused, so far as the agents could see. Even when she went on to criticize his “freakish hard-on for salads,” he only laughed and added a big chunk of ginger root to the basket, waving it at her in what seemed to be a significant way.

Julius and Pat exchanged baffled glances. “It’s not shaped that much like a penis,” Julius whispered dubiously. “There’s eggplants and zucchini right over there, too. I don’t get it.”

Pat shrugged; he didn’t get it, either. But it apparently meant something to Amelia, who had gone quiet and … “Holy crap, she’s actually blushing!” he whispered back.

The mysterious ginger root interaction was the most interesting thing they got from the whole hour skulking through the grocery store, however. Sam offered to drive Amelia to work the next day if she was fine leaving her truck in the vet clinic parking lot, and she accepted offhandedly; if this was a break in routine brought on by Sam finding the bugs in their house, it wasn’t unusual enough for her to comment on.

Pat and Julius were quiet as they followed the happy couple back to their house. They no longer expected Winchester to try to lose them or do anything requiring emergency services; instead, they parked again on the street outside their house and listened to their two remaining bugs as Amelia cooked an actual dinner instead of any kind of frozen tv-tray special like most of Pat’s last week’s meals had consisted of. They still had their bug in the hallway by the bedroom and one in the kitchen, but neither one had much of a view of anything, so they were down to audio-only for all intents and purposes.

“He doesn’t fit any kind of profile for serial killers I’ve ever seen,” Julius said finally. “No signs of emotional instability, unless you count whatever that was last night, but today, nothing. Maybe he’s only calm because he takes his feelings out on her and reaches some sort of catharsis?”

“She doesn’t flinch from him, or act excessively submissive,” Pat said. “She’s not afraid to push him around when she feels like it, but she’s not in control of him, either. Serial killers aren’t known for their ability to maintain balanced relationships with other people: either they’re completely controlling or completely controlled. This doesn’t fit.”

“Nothing fits,” Julius said bitterly. He’d been brewing for a while. “Nothing about the Winchesters has ever made a lick of sense, not from day one. And now the whole case is up to us to figure out, because no other federal agents have managed to survive investigating the Winchester brothers, and we can’t even get the brass to let us look at their files before we’re on the ground with them.”

“So we do more investigating,” Pat said. “We do our jobs. The answers are out there, we just have to dig until we crack the case.”

Julius was still frustrated, but he was listening. “Just keep listening in on him, or do you have a better idea?”

“I think we should check out the motel,” Pat said. “Is that where Winchester was living when he met Richardson? How long did he stay there? We can interview any neighbors who observed him, maybe, and what the manager thought of him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Julius said, sounding surprised.

”I do have them occasionally,” Pat said, dry.

* * *

They waited and listened as Winchester and Richardson had dinner despite the morning hour—joys of living with a night shift, Pat supposed. Then once they went to bed—thankfully without any screaming this time, Pat had never thought normal bedroom activity sounds would be such a relief—and the house became quiet, Pat and Jesse drove the van over to the motel.

It was nearing midday now, but the atmosphere at the motel was still the hush of early morning, people just starting to stir for the day. An old lady was enjoying a shady spot for her smoke right outside the doors, so they stopped to talk.

“Sure, I remember him,” she said, when they described Sam, mostly by holding a hand up for his height.

“He and the doctor lady were shacked up here for a while,” she continued. “Place has been a lot quieter since they moved out, that’s for sure.” She snorted and spat on the ground. “He in trouble?”

“We’re not at liberty to answer that,” Julius said. “What do you mean, quieter? Did he cause trouble?”

“Well, I don’t know as I should say,” she hedged.

Pat sighed. “We just want to ask him a few questions.”

She looked doubtful. “They moved, they ain’t here anymore.”

”What were they like when they were here?” Pat asked, and fished out a fifty to give her.

“Oh, well, I could tell you stories,” she said much more cooperatively, eyeing the bill. Julius rolled his eyes. “Never caused trouble, no, not the kind you mean. But let me tell you, what those two got up to at night… you hear a lot of people’s sex lives, around a place like this, but those two were on another level…”

Julius coughed, the tips of his ears going red. “Yes, well, anything else of interest?” He tried to redirect her, but the woman ignored him pointedly, patted Pat’s arm with her hand—still holding his fifty—and continued unabashed. “I do appreciate a man who knows how to please a woman, and let me tell you, all too often the ones with looks like that Sam fellow had don’t ever bother to learn anything they don’t have to. Women fall all over themselves for a man that tall, but you can’t rely on that in bed…”

After learning far more than they had wanted to, Pat and Julius managed to extricate themselves from her narrative and get inside. There was a younger man at the desk, looking bored.

“Room?”

“Not today.” Pat flashed his badge in unison with Julius. “What can you tell us about Sam Winchester?”

“Whatever he did, I ain’t no part of it,” the kid said. “He was never even on payroll.”

“Were you paying him?” Julius frowned. The kid looked nervous.

“Off the record?” Pat added coaxingly.

“Well, just a couple minor jobs…”

It turned out that the motel had, in fact, been paying Sam (off the record) for mechanical repairs and general handyman jobs. It had started a few days after he moved in and continued right up until the present day— “He doesn’t need to do as much anymore, because he’s fixed all the stuff that broke the most, but he still comes in if we call him up for anything—“

“So his income’s decreased now from what it was?”

“Well—no, I don’t think so,” the clerk said thoughtfully. “He’s been getting more work from other places in town. He knows how to fix pretty much everything, he usually does same day, and he doesn’t overcharge. It’s the trifecta that’s not supposed to exist, you know?”

Pat and Julius exchanged glances. Was it possible that he’d been on legitimate business in the closed bar earlier? Either way, someone probably _had_ given him a key if this was true.

“And you never had trouble with him? Attitude problems?”

The clerk looked genuinely baffled. “No? He was always professional…” His expression cleared like he suddenly understood. “Oh, you mean… look, what he got up to in the bedroom was never any of my business, man. The chick seemed into him the whole time, and we ain’t in the business of sweating noise disturbances here, so if some dickwad went and complained to you guys about it…”

“No, nothing like that,” Pat frowned absently. As though the FBI would be sent to deal with a noise complaint, anyway. Hmph. “Did you get the impression he was engaged with illegal activities or other suspicious characters?”

“Dude was a loner more than anybody I ever saw.”

“Antisocial? Put people off?”

“Nah, he was nice enough, just didn’t seem to have anybody, you know?”

The other people at the motel all said essentially the same things. “No phone, even,” the housekeeper added.

“No phone?” Julius was more startled than Pat. Well, he was younger. Pat remembered when all phones plugged into the wall. “Are you sure?”

“He used the motel phone. There’s some hard up enough they can’t afford their own phone, but not many, these days, and he wasn’t that hard up. Lost it? Maybe. But you want to hear what I think,” she leaned in confidingly, “I say he got rid of it.” She nodded. “So no one could find him.”

“And who do you think wanted to find him?” Pat couldn’t help asking.

“An ex-lover,” she said, winking. “Oh, he felt guilty about something, I’d bet my last dollar on it. But he wasn’t going back to where he’d been, either.”

“Because he was with someone new now?”

She looked at him askance. “No. He didn’t take up with the margarita lady for the first few weeks he lived here, but I’d have said the same thing about him from day one.”

“How can you be sure when they began their relationship?”

She snorted. “Honey, everybody in the building knew when they began their relationship, they weren’t exactly subtle about it.”

* * *

They left with a great deal more data and not much of it that clarified their picture of Sam, or for that matter, Amelia. Julius had gotten desperate towards the end and started asking about her, too. She’d been in a downward spiral before Sam turned up, by all accounts: drinking a lot, yelling at anybody who looked at her cross-eyed—“I can’t imagine,” Julius muttered—and generally dealing poorly with whatever issues she was going through, several people agreed. At least before Sam got involved with her. Opinions after that were divided on whether he was taking advantage of her vulnerable state to live off her salary and physically abuse her more days than not—screaming was a common theme that came up—or if she was a total “drama whore” who was playing everything up for attention and it was just as well they’d moved out already...

At one point they realized mid-interview that this had to be the Mephisto guy Sam had told the detective about, mostly because he gave off “creep” vibes with every word he reluctantly and nervously gave them. The only time he seemed to forget they were law enforcement was when he got caught up in detailing Amelia’s daily schedule and perceived “bitchiness.” Pat and Julius decided that Sam’s decision to turn him in to the local cops was very likely justified.

Overall, they learned a lot about Sam, Amelia, and Sam and Amelia together, including the history of their dog who had presumably been the cause of their meeting: Sam had had the splinted, bandaged dog with him when he first got a room. What they did not find was any hint of Sam’s criminal activities or evidence of his brother’s whereabouts.

Pat and Julius drove back to the Winchester-Richardson house in thoughtful silence and checked their bug feeds, but the pair were still sleeping soundly. Julius spun his chair around and raised his eyebrows at Pat. “Well?”

“If he’s playing some sort of long con, none of this gets us any closer to understanding what he’s after,” Pat said finally. “If he’s genuinely separated from his brother, trying to hide as a normal person from his criminal past, we might not have much to gain by hesitating to bring him in as soon as we have sufficient manpower.”

“So, his brother dies or they have a blowout fight, and suddenly Sam just wants to be Joe Average? Settle down with a cranky alcoholic and a gimp dog and fix motel air conditioners to pay for his organic salads?” Julius shook his head. “How does someone go from gleefully shooting up banks and diners full of strangers to white picket fence? We’ve got less idea what’s going on in his head than we ever did.”

“Sometimes we don’t get to,” Pat said. “Sometimes crazy nutjobs are just crazy nutjobs, and our job is to make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity to make any more people dead the next time he decides to 180 his life around.”

Julius sighed. “So what’s next?”

“We’ll keep an eye on him for now,” Pat said. “Who knows what he might show us. But he knows someone planted those bugs; he knows someone is watching him. It’s not safe to assume he doesn’t know we’re out here.”

“He could decide to attack, he could feed us misinformation,” Julius nodded. “I get it.”

“He could slip away anytime he’s out of sight and disappear for good,” Pat said more practically. “And I don’t think we’d be able to find him again if he didn’t want to be found.”

“He’d be willing to kill us to cover his tracks,” Julius said. “We can’t ignore the deaths of the previous teams sent after him.” Hendrickson and Reidy had been the best, but it hadn’t saved them or Director Groves. Valente and Morris had been good and they were gone too. All dead or vanished in mysterious Winchester-related incidents.

“I know,” Pat said heavily. “But I don’t think he wants to run. I think if we stick around and don’t escalate, he’ll wait to see what he can get away with.”

“Alright,” Julius said, to his credit, trusting Pat’s judgement and accepting their risk with an uneasy shrug. “But we need new tactics. We can’t assume anything we see from him at this point isn’t something he’s deliberately feeding us.”

“We need to apply something he won’t expect,” Pat agreed. “Something that pressures him without seeming like _we’re_ pressuring him, if we want to see his honest reactions.”

“What’s going to make a hardened career criminal sweat that he won’t immediately blame on us?” Julius wondered out loud.

* * *

Amelia Richardson’s father had been Army, and he was more than willing to drive up for a visit after Pat sent him a phone call through all the proper channels.

“What’s this about?” he asked sharply once they met up a couple miles from the target house. “All I heard was ongoing investigation and some chance of Ammy in danger. Why is my daughter in danger?”

“We don’t believe her danger is immediate,” Julius soothed, “but it is serious.”

Pat extended his hand. “Will you come inside so we can brief you on the situation?”

Wary eyes studied Pat a moment before he shook his hand. “I appreciate you calling me in.”

Once they were settled on the bench seats in the van, Pat began. “Is the name Sam Winchester familiar to you at all?”

Stan blinked. “Not that I recall. Should it be?”

“How about his brother, Dean Winchester?”

That got a flicker of recognition. ”Sam and Dean Winchester—weren’t they the psychos at the top of the Most Wanted list about a year back?”

“The very ones,” Julius said, not smiling.

“They died.” Stan said. “Shot trying to escape capture.”

Neither Pat nor Julius said anything.

“They ... died?” This time it was a question.

”No,” Pat said. “Sam, at least, is still very much alive.”

“Is my daughter in danger from him?” Stan asked slowly.

“You’re not going to like this,” Pat warned. “They’ve been living together for about eight months now.”

Stan started to his feet. “What! And you dingosticks have been sitting pretty until now without telling me? We’ve got to get her out of there!”

“We only got here and confirmed it was actually Sam Winchester yesterday,” Julius protested.

“She doesn’t seem to be held against her will or coerced, from what we can tell,” Pat said. “And we don’t want to move against Sam until we can be reasonably sure of containing him. Which means finding out if we need to worry about his brother. So far there’s no sign of him, but they’ve killed too many people to risk complications by rushing in blind.”

Stan made a sharp chopping gesture. “Every minute she’s with him is an unacceptable risk!”

“He seems stable with her based on all information we were able to gather yesterday, and we can’t afford to _de_ stabilize him,” Julius said. His eyes met Pat’s briefly; no need to share the bedroom screaming antics with her father, not now.

Stan looked like he wanted to explode, but he closed his eyes and breathed deeply until he’d gotten himself under control. “All right. I’m going to trust you—for _now_. I’m assuming there’s a reason you called me in. What do you need before you can move on this asshole?”

Pat nodded acknowledgement. “He has at least one connection with the local cop-shop. So we’re reluctant, obviously, to use them for anything related to this case. But it’ll be a couple days at least before our home office can get us the people we’d need to take him down safely _without_ the locals, and if Sam gets wind we’re about to move it may be impossible to take him down at all, especially with an innocent—which I assure you we are still at this point assuming your daughter to be—in the mix.” He paused to make sure Stan was following him.

Stan nodded shortly.

“The biggest thing we need to know is about his brother. How gone is he? The Winchesters have proven adroit at slipping out of custody. The last thing we need is to arrest Sam and have his brother bust him out days later because he wasn’t as gone as we thought he was.”

Stan nodded again, and Pat continued. “The second thing is to prepare as well as we can for however this does go down. Where does he keep his guns? How many arms are on him or near him at any given time, when he’s at home or on the move? And — forgive me — how is Amelia likely to react? Does she know who he really is, and will she put herself between LEOs and Sam if it comes down to it? Is he likely to attempt to use her as a hostage if we try to arrest him when he’s with her? Obviously we would much rather time it so they’re apart, but there may come a moment we need to move suddenly. Third, what relationship does he have with any persons in positions of authority in this town? The one conversation we overheard so far seemed like a friendly encounter based on a previous interaction, but was it really? Is he paying or blackmailing her or anyone else? Is the police force leaking him things, and can they be relied on to properly arrest him and not let him slip away?” (Note- excessively long, break up)

Stan ticked them off on his fingers. “One, where’s Dean. Two, weapons number and location and likelihood of a standoff or hostage situation.” His voice only shook a little, to his credit. “And three, any cops in his pocket.” He shook his head. ”It’s a tall order, but seems simple enough. I assume you want to wire me and send me in?”

“We’re pretty sure he knows we’re watching,” Julius said. “He found the bugs we tried to place in no time. We’d need to send you with a passive listener only—you can bet he’d notice an earpiece. We’re relying on your relationship with Amelia to keep him from being suspicious of you.”

“I haven’t had much of one since Don died,” Stan said bluntly. “No, since he enlisted, really. She wants to pull away, and what can we do?” He turned his face away from them a moment. “But I’ll call her up, ask how things are going. See if I can wrangle an invitation to see where she’s staying now… I’ll play the concerned parent card as hard as I need to.”

“Sounds good,” Pat said. “You don’t need us telling you to be careful...but be careful anyway.”

* * *

Since they knew Stan was calling they were able to eavesdrop on the call, but it went as Stan had said it would. He made up a story about swinging through town and wanting to stop to see her, whereupon she had to explain about buying a house and it turned into a whole “official housewarming dinner.”

“And you’ll get to meet Sam,” she added. “It wasn’t actually just me buying the house, Dad. Um. _We_ bought the house. Kind of sudden, I know,” she rushed on, ”and I’m sorry for not telling you and Mom about it, or anything really, I’ve just been so…”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Stan said, holding it together admirably well. “We can get all caught up when we see each other, okay? And I can rake him over the coals then.”

“Oh god and this is _why_ ,” she laughed. “Just don’t kill him, okay, Dad?”

“No promises, if he’s hurting my baby girl,” Stan mock-growled. “You know me.”

Julius raised a brow at Pat—was he pushing too far?—but Pat shook his head. “If this is how he’d normally be, he has to stick to it. Don’t second-guess him.”

“I guess,” Julius shrugged.

“I do know you,” Amelia was saying, “That’s why I’m telling you right now you better behave yourself when you meet him.”

“Maybe you better tell me about this guy, then, Ames, if he’s that important to you,” Stan said, letting a little hurt into his voice.

Pat raised a brow approvingly.

“Oh god, I don’t know where to start,” she laughed nervously.

“How’d you meet him?” Stan prompted.

“He came into my work…” she trailed off.

“That’s respectable enough,” Stan said. “As long as you weren’t working as a stripper. Cause that’s a whole different conversation, sweetheart.”

“God, no,” she said. “He had a dog. He’d hit it with his car. It was a stray.”

“And?”

“I made him adopt it,” she confessed. “He looked like he needed a dog.”

“Of course you did,” Stan muttered. Pat and Julius exchanged glances. Of all things...

“And then he asked you to help him with it?” Stan asked, suspicion fully activated.

“What? No,” she said. “It turned out we were staying at the same motel, and then he fixed my sink…”

“He fixed your sink?” Stan’s voice conveyed the deep dubiousness he undoubtedly felt. Pat and Julius hadn’t mentioned Sam’s source of income to him; it hadn’t seemed relevant.

“The sink isn’t the point,” Amelia said, sounding defensive. “The point is, he’s been great to me!”

“Okay, honey,” Stan said, recognizing when to back off. “How about the dog? Did it live?”

“What? Yeah, we still have him,” Amelia said. “He’s great, too.”

“I look forward to meeting him,” Stan said, apparently quite sincerely.

* * *

Stan met up with them one more time to get his wire and go over last-minute details.

“Reconnaissance ONLY,” Pat emphasized to him. “It’s not a safe situation, but starting a fight won’t help anything, understood?”

“Got it,” Stan said. “Don’t upset the locals.”

Julius was still worried. “We don’t know Sam nearly well enough to say what’s likely to set him off…”

“Not much, if he’s been voluntarily living with Amelia and hasn’t killed her yet,” Stan said.

Pat was surprised. “That’s a lot more sanguine than you were yesterday.”

“Talking to her on the phone helped,” Stan admitted. “It’s been so long since we got more than a single-line email from her. But she sounded good, she sounded…” he paused, shook his head. “Happy. This whole thing is fucked up, you know?” He touched the wire with a fingertip to make sure it was in place, and then saluted them and got back in his car.

It got close enough to evening; Stan knocked on the door an hour before dinner was scheduled. Pat and Julius listened impatiently as Stan greeted his long-unseen daughter effusively, and Sam with wariness verging on hostility.

“What’s he doing?” Julius muttered. “It’s like he’s _trying_ to antagonize Sam. If he pushes too far and Sam loses it, we’ll have no choice but to go in.”

Pat grunted.

“Do you think Stan’s trying to force our hand by provoking Winchester into a fight?” Julius fiddled nervously with the volume controls. “He seemed like he was on board with the plan, but that’s his daughter on the line —“

“Sam’s not letting himself be provoked,” Pat noted. “He’s letting Stan say whatever he wants and letting Amelia rein her father in.”

“Stan couldn’t have known that he’d react that passively.”

”I don’t think Stan is trying to cause an incident,” Pat said thoughtfully. “I think he‘s testing his theory.”

They listened as Sam tried to bond using his father’s military service, and Stan deliberately rebuffed him, implicitly insulting Winchester’s father.

“He must have a lot of faith in his theory,” Julius said. “It sounds to me like he’s trying to get himself killed.”

Over the audio feed, Sam changed the subject awkwardly and Amelia jumped in to try to smooth it over.

“What do we know about Amelia?” Pat asked. “She’s not afraid of Sam, and she swears like a sailor and screams at strangers when she’s not doing well. If Sam was the type to get murderous every time he lost his temper over someone being rude to him, Amelia never would have lasted this long with him.”

”Oh,” Julius said. “That’s what Stan was trying to explain to us earlier.”

“Yep,” Pat said. “And now he’s in there trying to figure out if he can get Sam to blow his top, so he can get a handle on the risk Amelia’s in from him.”

Julius shook his head thoughtfully. “We’ve been thinking of Sam as a serial killer, but most serial killers are loners. Sam’s criminal activity is all highly associated with his brother. Maybe Dean was the unstable one, and Sam is used to calming him down.”

Pat grunted. It was a good idea, but… “Sam doesn’t make any particular effort to appease or calm down Amelia. Just lets her go until she runs out of steam.”

“Maybe he let Dean take out all his anger on others, then; maybe that was their impetus,” Julius speculated.

“Maybe there’s a limit to how well his relationship with Amelia reflects his relationship with Dean,” Pat shot back.

The conversation over dinner in the house continued to be stilted and awkward. They discussed Stan’s military service, speculated over Riot’s history and how he was adapting to the new house, and if Amelia might switch to day shifts at the clinic, now that she wasn’t swearing at clients anymore. As much.

“I dunno, night shifts have been working out okay so far,” Sam said teasingly.

“Shut up, I can too behave myself in public,” Amelia laughed. “As long as as all the dumbshits stay out of my way.”

“So, every second Tuesday, then,” Stan said, and for a moment they all laughed. But the light mood didn’t last.

“You gotta worry about more bad shit when you’re up and about all night, though, right?” Stan said, seemingly idly.

“He’s checking to see where Sam looks when he brings up danger,” Pat said quietly. “Smart.”

But Sam’s reaction was odd. “Bad shit can happen any time of day,” Sam said with sureness. “But sometimes there’s a particular breed of crazy that comes out at night, yeah.”

Amelia’s nervous laughter broke the tension. “But we really don’t have anything to worry about, right, Sam? Dad’s just a little paranoid about that kind of crap. I’ve never had any trouble at the clinic, or getting to and from work, either.”

“No, you’re probably fine,” Sam agreed lightly. “Sometimes you can just never be too paranoid.”

“It’s a screwed-up world out there,” Stan muttered.

“I’ll drink to that,” Sam said, and there was the sound of beer bottles clinking.

“You know, speaking of paranoia, it keeps niggling at me,” Stan continued. “I can’t help this feeling I might have seen you before somewhere, Sam.”

The immediate tension was palpable even from out in the surveillance van. “Yeah?” Sam said, too casual. “Sorry, can’t think where that might have been.”

“That would be pretty weird if you had,” Amelia added. “Sam’s been through Texas a few times before, but never stayed for very long.”

“Nah, probably nothing,” Stan said. “I think I recognize every third person on the street these days, it’s a bad effect of getting old.”

“Yeah, Sam probably just looks like someone you knew in the army,” Amelia laughed. “I would have noticed if he was around where we lived.”

Sam chuckled. “And I would have remembered if I’d ever seen someone as beautiful as Amelia before,” he said gallantly.

Pat and Julius looked wide-eyed at each other. “They’re both covering,” Julius said first. “Sam knows his crimes have been all over the news, but this is the first indication we’ve had that _Amelia_ has any idea he’s hiding anything.”

“Interesting,” Pat muttered. “It increases the chances that she’s knowingly colluding with him.”

“But what motive could she have for risking herself for a criminal like Sam? Drugs? Money?“

“She’s just that deeply in love?” Pat said sardonically. “I don’t know. If it was about money, I’d expect a more expensive house than this one, frankly. And we haven’t seen any evidence of drugs being in play…”

“She was in a depression spiral of some sort before they met,” Julius argued. “Prime opportunity to get hooked on something, and if Sam knew how to keep her supplied with it…”

“Possible,” Pat grudged. “But everybody at the motel seemed to think they were clean of anything like that.”

On the feed, the conversation continued. “What brings you into town, Stan?” Sam asked lightly.

“Oh, you know. Business trip,” Stan answered. “Am’s probably told you all about my work.”

“You know, I don’t think it’s come up much,” Sam answered, and Amelia laughed. Nervously? Pat wished for the hundredth time he could see expressions rather than just hear them.

“Dad’s an insurance investigator,” Amelia explained. “He has to travel anytime someone burns down their barn and wants a payout.”

“I was just over in Wink to look at a flooded-out basement,” Stan said. “We don’t cover floods. Especially when people light their own stuff on fire to try to claim that’s why it got water damage.”

“Do they seriously?” Sam laughed. “What people will do sometimes, wow. My brother used to say people could just be crazy.”

“Not everybody’s going to do something horrible, though,” Amelia said quickly. “Lots of people are good.”

“Hm,” Stan said. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Pat would bet his left shoe that Stan’s eyes were fixed on Sam as he said that, and he rubbed his forehead. Just how antagonistic could Stan be?

“Take Amelia for example,” Sam said. “Lots of people don’t give her credit. But Riot would probably be dead without her, and if she hadn’t made me keep him and stick around, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

“Probably something stupid,” Amelia said, her tone teasing.

“There’s stupid and then there’s apocalyptically stupid,” Sam agreed. “All I knew was I was in no shape to be on the road. A public safety hazard—sometimes I think about how lucky it was Riot got the worst of it.”

“You’re not exactly what I expected, Sam,” Stan said. He sounded thoughtful.

“I don’t think Sam is what anybody expects,” Amelia said.

“I think I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” Sam said dryly.

“Take’em as they come,” Stan said cheerfully. “Now I suspect there’s a few embarrassing childhood stories Ames here hasn’t bothered to share with you yet…you ever hear about the tragic death of her acting career at the age of five?”

* * *

“...It’s Don. He’s alive.” Amelia’s shocked voice echoed into the silence as neither Sam nor her father seemed to know what to say.

Julius cursed. “What? This wasn’t in anything I had—is he seriously?”

Pat shrugged, though he was as surprised as anybody else. “You think I know?”

Julius ignored him, busily tapping away at his screens. “Look at this email—he was declared dead in Afghanistan, but apparently that was only so he could go on highly classified special ops missions.” He glared at the screen. “I can’t believe we’re only getting access to this now, those morons didn’t think this was relevant information to this case?”

“The relevant information we don’t have for this case would fill a room,” Pat said. “What else is new?”

“Apparently when we sent the request to talk to Stan, the whole situation got around to Don somehow, and he insisted on catching the next flight back to Texas. His superior’s spitting fireballs.”

“Great,” Pat sighed. “When’s his ETA?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Julius said. His phone buzzed, and he checked it. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

“Locals made their grab for Guy Mephisto and missed him,” Julius said. “He had a police scanner in his room and they think he might be headed here.”

“Let’s just invite everybody to the party,” Pat growled. “Goddammit, there’s no way we can warn Stan, is there?”

* * *

A battered blue pickup truck came speeding down the street barely ten minutes later, narrowly missing the parked FBI van and making straight for Sam and Amelia’s house. The headlights jounced wildly on the darkened street as it took the curve into the driveway and revved up hard to drive straight into the living room. Startled exclamations had barely begun from inside when the pickup abruptly stopped with a horrible metallic crunch, however.

“It hit the garden rocks,” Julius said, stunned. The pickup hung half suspended on the decorative boulders in Winchester’s yard, wheels spinning hopelessly in the air over a depression.

“I bet he put them there on purpose,” Pat said, the layout of the garden suddenly clicking in his head. “Who the fuck installs a moat in front of their house on the off chance someone will try to drive into their living room?”

“Sam Winchester, apparently,” Julius said. “Do we move in?”

Outside, a very angry man was exiting his truck, yelling about how Winchester had ratted him out and he was going to take it out of his bitch’s hide. Sam saved him the trouble of storming the door by coming out to meet him. They both had guns in their hands, but Sam shot first, and suddenly the angry man from the motel had his weapon jerk out of his hand and fall to the ground. He cursed even louder, cradling his fingers. “Goddamn you, Winchester, I’ll…”

“We can do this the easy way or I can blow your kneecaps out,” Sam said, voice carrying easily across the street. “If you want easy, keep your hands in the air.”

Guy Mephisto kept his hands in the air, frozen.

“Good,” said Sam. “Now kick that thing over to me.”

The gun went sailing past Sam’s left knee, but he didn’t turn to track it.

“I know you keep handcuffs behind the seat in that thing,” Sam said calmly. “Put them on. If I see you getting anything else, I’ll assume you’re too stupid to live.”

“You can’t just shoot me!” Mephisto was moving slowly and carefully to follow Sam’s instructions, but apparently couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“You’re trespassing,” Sam said flatly. “And threatening harm. I absolutely can.”

Mephisto gulped and clicked the cuffs around his own wrists.

“It’s okay to come out now,” Sam called back to the house. “Could you grab my car keys, please?”

“Already got’em, babe,” Amelia’s voice came. “Want me to drive?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I’ll sit in back.” He addressed himself to Mephisto again. “Next choice: you can stay respectfully silent the entire time we’re in the car, or you can ride in the trunk. Which one sounds better?”

“If you’re going to take me somewhere so you can kill me…” there was real fear in his voice now.

“No,” Sam said clearly. “You’re scum, but the sooner you’re not my problem anymore, the better. We’re bringing you in to the cops.”

“Mind if I ride along?” Stan was standing by the door, arms folded.

“No problem,” Sam said, flashing a grin at him. “Let’s get in.”

Thirty seconds after the Impala peeled out, of course, the first sirens and lights started to appear as five or six cop cars showed up all at once. Pat sighed and got out of the van. “Little late, fellas. You just missed them. But your perp should be getting special-delivered to your front office shortly.”

“I’m sure if we hurry we can be there for it,” Julius added. “Come on.”

* * *

The cops cars cut through every stoplight on the way there, Pat and Julius’s van in tow, and made such good time that the Impala wasn’t anywhere in sight yet when they got to the police station. They all piled into the station anyway, and barely had time to explain a word before Winchester was walking in the door, gun casually pointed at Mephisto, still in handcuffs and walking ahead of him. Amelia and her father followed a discreet distance back.

“Hello,” Sam said. “You’ve been looking for this guy. He crashed his truck into my yard, so I made a citizen’s arrest.”

Guy Mephisto glared hatefully at him, but as he looked around the room at all the cops, his shoulders sagged and the fight went out of him.

“Thank you, Sam,” Detective Hudak said finally, when no one else said anything. “We can take him from here.” She waved a couple of officers forward to escort Mephisto out of the room to a cell; the sound of his rights being read faded down the hallway.

Sam casually slipped his gun into the back of his waistband as soon as he didn’t have to keep it on the perp anymore. Pat wondered if anyone was going to object to it, but as he looked around the room, the ones who didn’t know who Sam was seemed to have taken his absolute assurance that he should be there at face value. Sam was even...Pat squinted at him. If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn Sam was an off-duty officer, just from the way he carried himself, a collection of body language cues that the room seemed to subconsciously respond to.

And even the ones who did have some idea of Sam’s criminal record were wary and off-balance enough they didn’t want to push him. A few looked to Pat for cues, and he shook his head minutely. Winchester was still armed, nobody in here was prepared for this confrontation, and besides…

Amelia came up beside Sam and flung her arms around his neck. “Hero saves the day,” she murmured, and kissed him before laying her head on his chest.

Sam wrapped one arm protectively around her, but didn’t try to move her behind him. If she was deliberately putting herself between him and a potential shoot-out, he was accepting it, or at least trusting the roomful of cops to not want to shoot her.

Sam’s gaze fell on one particular older cop, and he blinked in recognition. “Is that...Officer Garcia?”

“It’s Sheriff Garcia now, but I don’t believe we’ve met, son,” the man rumbled.

“I was just a teenager, I’m not surprised you don’t remember me,” Sam said. “You worked with my dad on the case with the Framptons. Disappearing bodies, trails of blood and ghoul sightings…”

“Of course, you’re John’s boy!” Sherriff Garcia strode forward and shook his hand. “Awful case, but your dad was a great help. Glad to see you continuing the family tradition!”

“When I can,” Sam said quietly. The whole room had sort of relaxed; if Garcia said Sam was alright, plainly nobody was about to start anything. Pat exchanged glances with Julius. Sam seemed to have another surprise up his sleeve at every turn.

“You were in San Antonio last time I saw you,” Sam was saying. “Decided to dump the big city life? I heard they had some bad problems with hearts getting ripped out about five years back down that way…”

“Yeah, I was out here by then, thank God,” Garcia said. “Heard enough about it to be grateful it wasn’t mine to deal with. You been back in Texas long?”

“Five months. If I’d known you were here, I would have dropped by sooner,” Sam said warmly. “We’ll have to catch up sometime, let me buy you a beer…”

“Sure thing,” Garcia said with an easy smile. “You take care, son.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Detective Hudak added to Amelia, and they made their way slowly out the front doors, chatting casually the entire way.

Stan gave Pat and Julius a look that was a little wild-eyed, and followed. He’d observed the whole time without saying anything, and Pat felt that at least there was one other person who understood what he and Julius were feeling about this case: the feeling that the entire world had gone topsy-turvy and all the rules you thought you knew somehow didn’t apply anymore. No one had bothered to send a memo about the world upending, either.

They still weren’t giving up. Sam Winchester was dangerous, and needed to be locked up.

Their backup from Washington couldn’t get here fast enough to suit Pat.

* * *

“...and I want the Winchesters’ files _last week_ ,” Pat snarled into the phone at his boss. This was beyond ridiculous.

“I’ve been trying everything I can,” the boss said. “The files seem to be completely gone. Wiped out.”

“That’s imp…” Pat cut himself off. Impossible hardly seemed to mean anything to Winchester. “Then we need backup.”

“I’ve had Don Richardson chomping at the bit in my office for the last hour,” their boss said tiredly. “I’m sending him down there with a full ten-man team. Your reports have been worrying, to say the least.”

“Excellent. Thank you, sir,” Pat said, and let the dial tone ring in his ear. “We’re getting the people we need,” he told Julius.

“Can’t happen soon enough,” Julius said, eyes fixed out the window as Sam and Amelia strolled down the street, laughing and chatting, their dog ranging out in front of them to sniff at hydrants. “He hasn’t budged from her side since the station. Getting an opportunity when they’re separated may not be easy.”

“When has any of this been easy?” Pat scowled. “We’ll wait.”

“We’ll wait,” Julius agreed. “I just hope we don’t wait too long.”

* * *


End file.
